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2014 Newsletter

February 2014 Dear Friends: Yikes, its hard to believe a whole year has gone by already! The winter time , which I have been told is downtime on the farm, has been as busy as ever. Dave has worked many times over 16-hour days on the farm, only to stop for lunch and dinner. However, without the tremendous help of our friends and family, Dave would need to work 24 hours a day just to keep up with all of the improvements and expansions. We built a butcher shop over the spring/summer/fall for processing our chickens, washing eggs and veggies, and custom processing our beef and pork. It probably will never officially be finished, as I am not sure you are ever finished on the farm in any capacity, but we are utilizing it daily. There will always be improvements and ways to make everything more efficient.

You have asked and we have listened - GMO-FREE! With all of the news and concerns about
products containing GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms), yours and our concerns have led us to decide to give our customers the option to buy meats from animals fed with non-GMO feed/products. After hunting around, we have found a few mills in the state that can get us GMO-free feed for our animals. However, these mills are much further away and due to the nature of non-GMO feed, it is more expensive. We are excited to offer our customers high quality meats from animals that did not consume GMO feed and corn. Due to the increase of price, we are offering our customers the opportunity to buy either the broilers fed more conventional feeds (what we have been feeding them the last couple of years) or non-GMO feed for a higher price. Despite the type of feed given, all broilers will remain on pasture, where they chase grasshoppers and have a nice clean bed of grass to forage and sleep on.

CATTLE
We have not purchased any new cows this year as we have reached the point in which our girls are having enough calves to make it easier to provide more for our customers. We still have a little of a waiting list as just in the last month we have added many new names onto our list. Dave has artificially bred all of the cows and heifers that we are keeping this year and we are excited for our set of spring calves. We do not keep a bull on the farm as they are a hazard and make it difficult to keep the genetics separate. We now have two breeding seasons, both in the spring and fall. We are also now able to cull the animals in our herd that do not have the body structure or temperament that we want on our farm. We love our Lowline breed of Angus cows and love how they are wonderful mothers. However, this proves to be very traumatic for the mother sometimes as we have had some pretty independent calves that love to explore and do not care if they are away from their mother for longer periods of time. Having all of the calves within a three-week time-frame really gives the calves lots of playmates. There is always someone available and interested to play chase up and down the field. At times you see the mothers trotting after mooing at them. I am guessing they are telling their little ones to come back as they havent f inished their dinner and they need to wipe their face. We have had many laughs as we watch a mother standing over her calf mooing at him/her while the calf just lays there content, clearly ignoring what he/she is being told, refusing to follow her down the field. Im sure those calves will get a dose of their own medicine when they have little ones of their own that they are trying to control.

HOGS
We took a break from the hogs last year and, thinking back on the past year, we realized how much we missed having so many running around on the farm. They remind me of dogs; always so happy to see you when you come home and come a runnin when you call. Maybe its just because you usually have a treat, but thats beside the point. We did keep three girls last year and one had a litter of five boars. Not exactly going to expand the herd with all boys, but we are keeping one to breed the three girls we have and planning on having 6 litters this year. We have many woodlots we want the pigs to clean up which may sound like work, but for pigs, is all play. We plan to artificially inseminate the mother of the boar we will be using, and the boar will hopefully take care of the others.

LAYING HENS
Well, what an up-and-down year with the hens. We have had huge success with selling of our eggs. We honestly cannot keep any in stock for more than a day or two. We are currently supplying the Hummingbird Caf with our eggs and we are selling them at Pollys Market and the Trading Post in Tidioute, and at HerbsR4U2 and the Shurfine Market in Warren. We love our hens and ensure that they are treated like queens, however, they havent always acted like royalty. Since we give our ladies free-range to eat bugs, grass, and whatever else that interests them (I have seen them fight over a toad and a snake), they find many different places to lay their eggs, which does not always include the nesting boxes. So in the middle of summer when we went from collecting fourteen dozen eggs a day to only five, we knew we had to have a talk with them. While some nests were never found, we did find some pretty big ones that held huge clutches of eggs. Some lucky forest dweller had a nice a meal when they found it. We are back up to about twelve dozen a day and we are thanking our lucky stars that we purchased an egg washer to help with the job. We have also purchased 250 more layers for the summer rush. They will arrive on June 1 and make a big difference in our production.

BROILERS and TURKEYS

We again raised our broilers; however, we only raised the white broilers which have more of the breast meat instead of the dark meat. Each year we consistently get new customers wanting our chickens and our longtime customers wanting more. Last year we turned away orders for over 200 chickens total because we just did not have any extra to spare. We understand that it is hard to think about ordering chickens in February for our first processing date in June, but the orders for chicks must happen by the 7th of March in order to ensure we have enough for you. Be sure to order enough to last you the year as we consistently sell out. Putting in your order now ensures that we will have chickens for you. We are condensing our chicken dates and making the last processing date in September. For the last two years, our October chickens were too small because as it gets colder at night, they use more energy staying warm, thus not growing as much. Again, the chickens that we process before the Fourth of July and Labor Day are our most popular and sell out the quickest at our chicken supplier, so if you want those dates make sure you order them quickly. Remember, you have the option to order broilers raised with non-GMO feed supplements.

Turkeys this year will not happen. We had such wonderful reviews on our turkeys and people tried to already put in their order for next years Thanksgiving feast. Unfortunately, due to the need to raise them for so long and the amount of feed needed to raise them, we were actually losing money raising them. We could not stomach charging our customers higher prices in order to make them worth the time and money it takes to raise them. As a result, we will no longer offer turkeys here on the farm, at least for the next couple of years.

VEGETABLES AND FRUITS

For our second year in a row, our sweet corn sold out numerous times. We have decided that we will expand the number of sweet corn we plant which is currently about 80,000 seeds. Thats a lot of corn to pick (6500 dozen if you do the math). We went through so much corn last year that when we released the pigs into the corn field to clean up what was left, they turned to look at us as if to say, are you kidding, theres no corn on these stalks. So we thank you for enjoying our sweet corn and during those summer months, we cook up about a dozen a day to enjoy for dinner. Hopefully this summer Ethan will understand how to eat the corn and not just gnaw on the end. We told him that he was missing out on the best part, but to no avail. We will also offer random vegetables when we have a surplus, but potatoes and beans will definitely be on the cart. New this year, we are hoping to be able to offer some fruits. We bought fifteen blueberry plants and in our high tunnel (which is an unheated greenhouse) we will be filling it with grapes and strawberries. We are very excited and I figure I will be chasing the kids out of the fruit constantly. Our oldest, David, has a tendency to eat the blueberries even before they turn blue because he is too excited to wait until they ripen.

We are incredibly excited by the changes we are making on the farm which will further provide our family and yours with healthy foods we are proud to raise/grow. We do listen to your suggestions and concerns, especially with all of the news surrounding food safety and its effects on our health, so please, keep your questions and ideas coming. We look forward to seeing you on the farm this year and are eager to start planting. Your Dear Friends, Dave and Marjorie Manning (David and Ethan, too!) Riverview Farms Tidioute, PA

Riverview Farms Order Form

47 Jefferson Street Tidioute, PA 16351 Name ______________________________ E-mail _____________________________

(814) 484-7202

Phone Number ____________________

Pastured Poultry
Broilers $2.50/lb. with a $0.35 charge for bagging each chicken (this is what we pay per bag) $4.00/lb. for non-GMO broilers only available on July 19th. Parting out option- add $1.00 per bird parted. Please note if you would like them parted out. Date Total Birds Whole Roasters Parted out June 7 June 28 July 19 GMO FREE August 30 Sept 27

NOTE: JULY 19 ARE GMO FREE BROILERS. ALL OTHER DATES ARE CONVENTIONALLY RAISED BIRDS.

Pastured BeefPut me on the waiting list:_____ Yes _____ No I would like: ________ Half ________ Whole
of beef is no longer available due to the smaller nature of the Lowline breed. If you are already on our list, you will remain there unless otherwise noted.

Pastured Hogs
Put me on the list: I would like: ________ Yes ________ No

________ Whole (# of hogs)

*Our only option is whole because they are pasture-raised so they tend to be smaller. A 210 pound hog yields a 150 pound carcass and about 115-130 pounds of meat.

We do have USDA cut hamburger for sale. $4.00/lb. Call/Email to order!